Censors cut straight-sex scenes from 'Brokeback'

While U.S. conservatives are expressing dismay over the “gay cowboy” movie, “Brokeback Mountain” – widely seen as the likeliest candidate to win the Best Picture Oscar – audiences in conservative India will be watching the film’s full-frontal male nudity, male-homosexual kissing and implied homosexual sex – but not 40 seconds portraying the male characters having sexual relations with the women who play their wives.

India’s film-censorship rules are both strict and precise when it comes to women’s bodies – no female nudity and no male-female intimacy, explains GayNZ, a homosexual website in New Zealand.

But the guidelines provide no rules on male nudity or male homosexuality to guide the censors, resulting in scenes – controversial in the U.S. – left in.

Similarly, conservative Singapore, where homosexuality is illegal and defined by law as “an act of gross indecency,” will be showing the film uncut. The country’s film censorship board approved “Brokeback” in its entirety this week, reports 365gay.com.

While the board has forced cuts of scenes in homosexual-themed movies in the past, new rules, implemented in 2004, were credited for “Brokeback” slipping through unscathed.

According to the board’s statement, the movie was approved because it did not “promote or glamorize the lifestyle,” although it will be required to carry warning messages and be shown to audiences 21 years of age or older.

Malaysia’s largest film distributor said it would not even attempt to receive approval in the largely Muslim nation. It’s been banned in both China and the United Arab Emirates.